Twelve Mile Walk from Withypool around Horsen Ford and back to the Royal Oak

Withypool is a wonderful centre for walking. We know, we live there. This website may give its occasional readers the misleading impression that the sun shines every day on Exmoor, but all those cheery pictures only look that way because, if the weather is wretched, we stay at home. More accurate is the old saying, “In the summer, on Exmoor, it rains every other day; in the winter, it rains every day.” On this sunny September morning, however, the river Barle looked its best as we crossed the bridge and walked past the village shop.
A few yards further on we turned left up a narrow path with a handrail, and then followed the footpath past the abandoned school and uphill through the fields belonging to Summerhill. The planning authority in its wisdom has refused permission for change of use for the school from a redundant field centre, (I know of at least two others within the National Park,) to a private dwelling, and thus its missionary zeal has rewarded the owner with a white elephant and the village with a long-term eyesore.
We came out into a lane between steep banks topped with beech and turned left, passing the drive entrance to Summerhill. This is Kitridge Lane, a wonderfully sheltered place to exercise horses in rough weather, when the ripping winter winds send the rain, hail and snow flying horizontally over the hedgerows. We walked up it until we reached the gate out on to Bradymoor. To the left we caught glimpses of Brightworthy Barrows, a highpoint on Withypool Common.

Here we followed the track straight ahead until we crossed the road and kept on over the moor, following the path correctly signed, for the time being, to Cow Castle. The wooden finger posts on the moor take some fearful punishment, particularly from the wild ponies rubbing themselves against them, and all too often you find the board here splintered or pointing in an eccentric direction.
Where the path began to descend, the landscape opened before us. To the south stretched the valley which leads up Sherdon Water.

In high summer where the Water meets the River Barle at Sherdon Hutch, a wooden barrier to hold back uprooted trees in time of floods, families with picnics sit on the bank here and plunge dauntlessly into the stream.
As we walked downwards, on our left we could see the river Barle shimmering silver as it flowed towards the ancient columns of Landacre Bridge.

A bridge has stood here for centuries. In Anglo-Saxon times, a feudal parliament known as the Wainsmote met here.
The path eventually led us through a plantation of conifers to Horsen Ford, where there is a footbridge over the River Barle. Upstream are the hummocks of Cow Castle and The Calf.

Downstream the water dazzled in the sunlight. Near the bank we found a patch of Field Scabious, another wild flower to add to our list.

The track from the ford led upwards through a remote valley. There are few paths on this part of the Moor, and the uplands to the left, which we know well from hunting there in winter, stretch from the evil Horsen Bog over the top of the hill known as Ferny Ball back towards Sherdon Water. The track took us through a number of gates and a herd of cattle, until it reached Horsen Farm. We stayed on the concrete farm road for only a few yards before we turned left and headed up the bridleway towards Horsen Hill. The farm is a large and well-kept holding, particularly for Exmoor, and the pastures are carefully maintained leys for the good-looking cattle. Horsen Hill itself, however, is a different matter. Although this rough, rushy, moorland top is easy to negotiate in September, later in the year it would be a nightmare for walkers. Even horses labour through its sticky, black morasses.
On the far side of the hill the country around Barkham opened before us.

We followed the track round towards what the maps call Withypool Cross and the locals, Woolcombe Cross. Just past where an attempt to build some form of sheep pen had been abandoned half-completed for some reason, we came to Sherdon Farm. This isolated dwelling may appear to be empty, with a disembowelled car rotting quietly before it, but it is not. We did not dwell, and soon we were at the foot of the track, crossing Sherdon Water.

A steep climb, with Woolcombe Farm on our left, took us to a motor road where we turned left. As we walked northwards, on our left we could see the cottage in the lee of Ferny Ball hill. Up until ten years ago the cottage was in ruins and only served to shelter an old caravan, in which lived the famous Exmoor writer, Hope Bourne, who sadly died a few weeks ago. Her only comfort in the caravan was a wood-burning stove, and she fed herself by shooting pigeon, deer, rabbit and hare with a .22 Winchester rifle or a twelve bore shotgun. Her water came from a stream, and to save washing up she ate straight from the frying pan and drank from three mugs; one for tea, one for coffee, and one for lemonade. When in her eighties she was persuaded to live in a house in Withypool, she slept on the floor in front of the fire. Books like “Living On Exmoor” brought her a measure of fame, but she never compromised her way of living and only just missed her ninety third birthday.
To the right of Ferny Ball lay the valley of the Barle which led back to Horsen Ford.

As we crossed a cattle grid back on to the open moor, we could see as far as Dunkery Beacon. We walked downwards towards Landacre Bridge, and then swung right up the path which led back to Withypool.

As we approached Brightworthy Farm, in a dense tunnel of beeches, we came across an extraordinary object.

A banana skin, a rotten bloody banana skin! What kind of mind could have dropped litter in this most beautiful of places, a good fifteen minutes walk from the nearest public highway? Even a monkey would have paused for thought before dumping it. Banana skins may well be biodegradable but could he not have put it back in his pocket? Only the waters of the Barle tumbling over its low ledges could soothe away the irritation.

The path followed the river closely until there was the Withypool bridge in front of us again.

The “Royal Oak” at Withypool has been one of our favourite pubs since we first drank here thirty years ago. Even then Jake Blackmore probably was keeping the bar and its excellent pint of bitter.

Landlords have come and gone, but Jake has remained loyally at his post, as much a part of the scenery as the hunting prints and relics which crowd the walls. If you disapprove of hunting, you are as entitled to your opinion as the next man, but just remember if you are standing in the Royal Oak at Withypool, its odds on that the next man loves hunting with a passion. And that includes the long-haired bloke behind the bar.
The Royal Oak today is leased by the owners of the nearby Tarr Farm Inn, famous for its haute cuisine, and so you would expect the pub grub at the “Oak” to be of a superior kind. You can get a sandwich or a ploughman’s at lunchtime, but the specials are the thing – fresh figs with blue cheese and parma ham, wood pigeon and peach sausages, venison steaks, and so forth and so on.

It’s difficult to think of anything more pleasant than sitting in the low black-beamed room, the fire blazing, with a day on the Moor behind you, and before you a pint of Jake’s bitter.